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The Science of Spellcasting
When a wizard casts a spell,the actions they take are only the tip of the iceberg of what is really going on, to create the magical effect the spell produces requires a long and arduous process that takes years to learn and decades to master. 'Casting Spells' Not just anyone can say as few words.wiggle their fingers and cast a spell, it is a subtle rewriting of the universe that goes through a three point process. When events happen in the world around, from naturla disasters to political revolutions, they can be attributed to the position and placement of the stars and other stellar bodies in the sky. If it were not for the cosmic distortion and astral delay of how we see the stars, events could be predicted by the patterns of these astral bodies before they happen. Some stars have regular and repeated paths, or predicable patterns that certain people believe can be used to give vague premonitions of the future, but this astrology ''as it is known has never been accurate enough to be of any great use. What can be learned from the effects of the stars on the world though is how to duplicate their influence. By the principles set up by the first wizard, '''Arcandallus '''of Magia around 7,000 years ago, a wizard can imitate the movement and energies of the stars and create miniature versions of the effects they have on the world. This takes more than mere gestures and words though. Arcandallus discovered that after spending decades cataloguing every star in the sky, he would hear strange sounds appeared in his head, upon concentrating on the collection of clustered stars or constellations, he realized these sounds where connected to them and named them all thusly. The process of learning all these primary, secondary and tertiary constellations is called the Fundamentals and what all apprentice wizards must do before they even think about casting spells. Though this may seem like an arduous and pointless task (there being thousands of stars and not all of them used in spells), what this exercise is really doing is exercising a part of the brain called the '''thaumic gland', a part of the brain that stores and releases magical energy n most creatures brains this is a simple passage for certain information, but when a wizard trains this gland through memorizing the fundamentals, it grows and opposed to the magic of the stars passing though, it gains the ability to keep it trapped and stored there.The more exerciused this gland is defines how many spells can be stored in here per day, and is why they must have a nights rest to replenish it, just like they would with any other body part.* *an interesting fact is that the thaumic gland is located near the pleasure centre of the brain, meaning that casting spells often stimulates sensations of good feelings and visa versa, where over stimulation of the pleasure centre, such as with sex and certain drugs can trigger the thaumic gland often resulting in bursts of harmless energy from the wizard, but more importantly the loss of all the wizards prepared spells. This explains why wizards are often seen as humourless, sexless over serious folks. That is the first step, but how the magic gets in the wizards head is little more complex. When the star formations are put into the exact right combination (and considering the thousands of stars in the sky there are millions if not billions of combinations, many of which do nothing) they are then put down onto paper with ink (and theoretically other substances) capturing the force combination of stella energies in the desird effect or 'spell'. This alone is not souly what a spell is, as it still needs to be channeled as well as the unseen element accounted for: thaums. These constellations when drawn down form the magical 'writing' people are used to seeing in a wizards spell book. The method this is done can vary from wizard to wizard, as long as the star paterns are clearly indicated in a way they understand, making it difficult but not impossible for another wizard to decipher. A spellbook can have several of these formulas for different spells (each spell consisting of several hundred stell formations), but hold no actual magic themselves. The process of a wizard reading these combination of magic symbols at the start of a day allows the energies of the stars to to reach their head as if they had gazed at the stars themselves. Even the slightest inperfection of a stars pattern on the book can block the energies from reaching the wizards head and the spell not being learned (this is why the finest materials and inks must be used in their writings). The process of reading the patterns, gathers the magic in the right combination in the wizards thaumic gland for which they can release later. Should their thaumic gland not be big enough for the spell (not high enough level to cast that spell) they cannot store it in their head, but may be able to channel it, if smart enough. It is possible to capture the magic of the whole spell in the writing to be released at a later date by the wizard or anyone able to cast magic (these are known as scrolls). The constellations or symbols all relate to different factors in the universe, these can range from fire, to pleasure, to speed or thought or nearly anything. Lesser ones refer to commands, like stop and start, and countless other intricacies. There are eight well goverened schools of magic, which refer to the sections of the sky and include: abjuration, conjuration, divinating, enchantment, evocation, illusion, necromancy and transmutation but have smaller subschools within them too. A wizard can chose to specialize in just one of these schools, but in doing so makes his mind less able to withstand certain other schools to compensate for this. Once the spell is in a wizards head they can not simply release it as a bust for raw energy, they have all the ingredients in there (channeled through their spellbook exercise) but now they need to mix them. The way modern spells are designed is that the process of reading them gathers all the ingredients in the right order except the key or trigger with ''finishes the spell. These last symbols require the wizard to mimic the stella bodies with their hands and utter the names (the somatic and verbal components). As these stella formations reflect aspects of the world around, either perceived or litteral, they can sometimes be shortcutted by using actual objects that have those meanings ingrained into their very nature - these are material compenents and focus'. Reciting of the spell it its raw form is possible but can take anything from fifteen minutes to an hour, thus making it impractical to cast directly from the book, and thus a wizard must spend the beginning of his day casting all but the ends of all the spells he wants to use it.* ''*Arcandallus intended cast all his spells directly from the book taking hours, and it was actually the reprehensible Diaster’s Colleges who developed the principles of memorization similar to haw they are used today. Also on that not, the term ‘memorization’ to choose you spells for the day is no longer in popular use, thought of to be inaccurate and thus most modern wizards use the term ‘preparation’ instead, but you will still find the more senior mages refer to ‘memorizing’ their spells. 'Creating New Spells' When a wizard creates a new spell they (TO BE CONCLUDED) TEMPORARY CONCLUSION... * Access to a library, just as if the character were researching to learn a spell. * 1,000gp expenditure per week * 1 week per spell level * Spellcraft check of 10 + level of spell means the character was successful. 'Magic Items' The arrangement of magical symbols to form a spell needs a vessel to pass through, and this is nearly always a person (the spell-caster), but ingenious wizards have programmed items to work in the same way – magic items. In fact it is really only, scrolls, staves and wands that work in this particular manner, holding a series of spells usually through writings of active arcane symbols, but sometimes though other more ingenious modern methods. This process of basically creating an artificial thaumic gland is rather expensive and thus explains the price of these items. The way the spells are stored in these items is also why they require a spell trigger from the wizard as with a spell that was their own. Methods were later developed to hold spells or the effects of spell to form other magic items, but this is a subject for another place. 'New Feats' Star Casting